“Blackmail?”
“If’n that’s what you call it.”
“So did this Miss Abby confront Mr. Birch?”
“No, she too damn scairt to do it her own self so she asked me to do it an’ I say uh-uh. I ain’t gone mess up my business on doin’ somethin’ like that.”
Faustus broke one of his own rules by skipping ahead.
“So you needed a go-between, someone to handle the negotiations?”
Carver stared at him for a moment, deciphering the words.
“We needed a man to do the threat, yeah. So’s I knew this white man who, was, uh, well, I know he did things like that with white folks and we done set it up. He was going to tell Mr. Birch that he knew what was what and he would tell his wife unless he paid him not to. Then this white man was going to give the money to Abby.”
“And the man was Mr. Bingham?”
“I ain’t knowed his real name, but he the one dead for sure.”
Faustus began to pace, an unconscious habit he undertook when trying to formulate questions or weigh information. The idea that a prostitute and a housemaid might concoct such a scheme was not inconceivable, but his experience with such folks in the past made him doubt that the women would shoot the man dead, and for what?
“On the night that this Mr. Bingham was killed, the night of the fire, my understanding is that you were not on the island.”
The woman bowed her head.
“No, sir. That’s not exactly right.”
“No?”
“We was at the fair over this side, but then we went back cause Abby didn’t want that man cheatin’ us out our money.”
“You knew when Mr. Bingham was to meet with Mr. Birch?”
“Yeah. An’ we was there. Only hidin’ round by Mr. Pott’s boardin’ house in the dark just watchin’.”
“And what, pray tell, did you see?” Faustus’ voice ratcheted up.
“The man, what you call Bingham, was at my place, back by the wood pile where Abby had tole’ him.”
“He was alone?”
“Yes, sir. All dressed up like some swell. Like some bidness man an all.”
“And did Mr. Birch arrive while you were watching?”
“No, sir,” Shantice said, but the quivering in her hands told Faustus there was more so he stood silently, waiting.
“But Mizz Birch did,” she said.
“Mrs. Birch?” Faustus said, giving away his surprise.
“Yes, sir. We done heard someone walkin’ up the road and walking hard. Then we seen Mizz Birch astridin’ like a mad bull.”
“And did she meet with Mr. Bingham?” Faustus asked.
“If’n she did, sir, we didn’t see it. When we seen Mizz Birch come up we was scared and hid ourselves back in the bushes behind the boardin’ house and then hightailed it back to the lake, sir.”
“Before the fire?
“Yes, sir.”
“And you never heard a gunshot?”
“No, sir.”
Faustus took a second, assessing and processing the information and how it skewed his original hypothesis. Simplicity, he reminded himself. Rules of human behavior.
“Did you see anyone else there that night who might vouch for you, Mizz Carver, anyone at all?”
“No, sir. Wasn’t anybody else. They was all over at the carnival.”
Faustus had stopped his pacing. He had no reason not to believe her account, was in fact duty sworn to accept it as her attorney. At that point he went to the door and summoned McAdams. Marjory hesitated at first, searching the attorney’s eyes for some clue. Now she had taken on the look of the student before the headmaster.
“I thank you for your candor, Miss Carver,” Faustus said, turning to the house woman. “And we shall be in touch before the magistrate arrives.”
“You gone get me free?” Carver asked in a voice touched with only the smallest tinge of hope.
“I will do my best, young lady,” Faustus said, moving to leave. A thought, a recollection of a piece of information that Byrne had shared from his friends the binder boys, entered his head. He turned back to Carver.
“One more question,” he said, and she looked up. “When you were watching this man, this Mr. Bingham, you said he was dressed like a business man. What made you believe that?”
“He was in fancy clothes. Not like some party or somethin’. But not like he was comin’ to the Styx to do somethin’ shady like. An’ he was carryin’ a bidness case. Like a leather case that would hold papers and such.”
Faustus dwelt on the answer for a moment and went out the door.
W
HEN
Byrne awoke, he was freezing. The hard light of midday was in his eyes. His back was either on fire or frostbitten. He turned his head to the right and saw a wet wooden sideboard next to his face. He turned to the left and looked a dead fish in the eye. When he began to regain his sense of smell he closed his eyes again and hoped this was not hell.
The last thing he recalled was finding the road, a trail of crushed rock barely wide enough for a wagon. He’d been limping, holding his knotted shirt to his side for two hours. When one entire side of the shirt and one loosed sleeve became soaked in blood, he’d quit looking at the wound. On the road he’d meant to turn north, but his brain was too blurred and spinning to be sure he’d made the right selection. The sun suffered an eclipse, its center gone black, and when the rim of light around it came down over his head, he’d passed out.
“Michael! Michael Byrne. Can you hear me?”
Called by the devil, Byrne thought, hearing the words and expecting Lucifer himself. A face started coming into focus. Danny? Had he joined his brother in hell?
“Come on, son. Put some effort into it now,” a familiar voice said. The intent eyes of Amadeus Faustus looked down on him.
“OK, boys. Let’s get him down out of there and into the back of the bar,” Faustus said. “Watch that wound on his side now.”
With that, four men slid Byrne down out of a fish wagon loaded with red snapper and ice, carried him into the tavern, and laid him out on a table in back.
Faustus went to work without a word: soothing, questioning, or otherwise. He used a razor sharp knife to cut away pieces of the shirt still tied around Byrne’s waist. He loosened the pants and stripped them off as well, probing with careful fingers around Byrne’s rib cage and then his hip. A boy came in carrying a large wooden case.
“Put it just here, Adam, and get some water for this man if you please.” Byrne looked at the case, trying to determine what might be coming. The box was labeled with a distinctive cursive lettering spelling Johnson and a red cross.
Faustus opened it and withdrew a bottle of liquid. He’d left the knot of Byrne’s shirt in place, fastened there with both dried and sticky blood, and thus staunched some of the flow. Now Faustus pulled at it, pouring antiseptic over the area.
“Sssssss,” Byrne hissed between his teeth.
“Easier to work with wounds on a corpse,” Faustus said. “But I still prefer working on the living. Don’t you, Mr. Byrne?”
“In this case, yes,” Byrne said, his head coming more alert with the pain. His voice was raw and foreign to his ears.
With the wound exposed, Faustus took a dressing from the case and began dabbing at its edges.
“Fairly large caliber. Smaller than a musket ball but bigger than a handgun, although you’ve had a few hours to pucker a bit.”
“Rifle of some kind,” Byrne managed.
Adam returned with a beer mug full of water. Faustus directed the lad to pour some into Byrne’s mouth. “Not too much now,” he said without looking, concentrating instead on the entry wound.
The feeling in Byrne’s throat was cool.
“Loss of blood and dehydrated,” Faustus said. “You were lucky the fish wagon came along when it did. The driver said you were in an unconscious pile when he spotted you under a cabbage palm. Not quite like the gutters of your Lower East Side but still an ignominious spot to die. Can you roll onto your side, please?”
Again Byrne hissed at the pain when Faustus poked the corner of the antiseptic soaked swab into the hole in his back.
“I trust you know what you’re doing, Faustus.” Byrne said. “This isn’t Appomattox.”
“Ha! You’re not in the hands of an amateur, my friend. And in fact I’ve twice read
Johnson & Johnson’s Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment.
I believe a copy came with the first aid kit.”
When Faustus was done with the wounds he and the boy helped Byrne off the table and into a back room of the tavern. A cot was pushed against one wall and they lay him down on the old stained mattress. When he tried to close his eyes, the walls began to spin. The room was dark and dry and the temperature high. Byrne could feel the tingle of blood coming back into his skin.
“The wagon driver was smart enough to cover your side with the ice he had aboard. It probably kept you from bleeding out more than you did,” Faustus said, sitting nearby in a straight-backed chair.
“The bastards tried to kill me,” Byrne said, looking at the old Mason but seeing the faces of Ashton, McAdams, Pearson and Birch.
Faustus sat quiet for a moment, letting Byrne’s anger seep out of the way.
“Who, exactly, are they?” he finally said. “And what do you think their motivation to kill a Pinkerton employed by the most powerful man in the state would be?”
When Byrne listed out the men on the hunting trip, Faustus seemed unable to let the names of Flagler’s right-hand, the manager of the Poinciana and a banker of high esteem sit under the title of attempted murderers in his head.
“The guide, Ashton, did the dirty work, and I smashed his kneecap to pieces for his trouble,” Byrne said.
“I heard he was brought into Dr. Lansing’s early today,” Faustus agreed. “The three others you’ve named brought him in on one of the pump carts. Some of the boys said it was quite a sight, a banker and a hotel big shot working the pump and perspiring like pigs, I believe they said.”
Byrne wryly smiled at the vision.
“They described it as a hunting accident,” Faustus said. “You’ve reason to believe differently?”
“He would have blown my head off if the damned alligator hadn’t scared hell out of me first. The lizard was eight feet in front of me. No way Ashton was aiming at it and not me.”
“Did you question Mr. Ashton as to his actions?”
“He was, what you might call, forthcoming, considering there was steel baton across his throat.” Byrne said. “According to him, it was real estate. Said I was getting too nosey about some deal. What the hell would that mean? I haven’t so much as considered buying a piece of land even if I had the money.”
“But what are you getting your nose into?” Faustus said. “The shooting death of your own brother, a man, and excuse my bluntness here, who was known as a swindler and not just in the real estate field. Then there’s your defense of a poor Negro prostitute arrested for said killing. And let’s not forget your wooing of a prominent young woman. Don’t deny it sir, I long ago learned to read the eyes of incipient love and the sprinklings of lust.”
“She knew my brother.”
Faustus raised his eyebrows.
“She admitted she knew him. And she’s admitted being there when they found his body.” The ache in his side was perhaps the lesser of two pains. “So what the hell else does she know about this whole affair, including who killed Danny?”
For several moments, Faustus sat mute. Then he leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and speaking in measured, clear statements of fact.
For the next hour he recounted verbatim his interview with Shantice Carver, her admission of the blackmail scheme, her co-conspirator Abby, and her observation of Mrs. Birch approaching Byrne’s brother in the dark near the place his body was found.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Byrne interrupted. “Birch, did you say? Birch was the name of one of the Poinciana men on the hunt this morning. He was introduced as some kind of banker. And I recall his face from the city, a man who paid his way out of a prostitution raid at the Haymarket Dance Hall.”
Faustus simply stared at Byrne out of the shadows.
“I don’t believe in coincidence, my young friend. And I doubt that you, as a good investigator, do either.”
“I’m not an investigator,” Byrne said. “I’m a Pinkerton guard, as you and everyone else reminds me.”
“Ha!”
“What ha?”
“I do have contacts in the north, despite my southern disposition. And my inquiries have resulted in an interesting description of a man with your name and physical appearance who was involved in some investigation of the most dangerous sort.
“You at one time took on the role of tracking the misdeeds of your own superiors and their political bosses. Highly placed and dangerous politicians at that.”
Silence from the bed.
“In fact, rumor has it that a compromise was made. Your life may have been spared if and only if you left the city and never came back.”
“Never was not a word that was used,” Byrne said quietly.
“Nonetheless, I don’t believe you when you say you’re not a born investigator. And I don’t believe that you can observe a moral and ethical misdeed without being pulled to make it right.”
“What is this, the code of the Masons or something?” Byrne said, his voice sounding more cynical than he wanted.
“It is not just a code of Masons. It is a code of true men in a civilized society.”
“You call this civilized?” Byrne said, sweeping his hand across the dingy room.
Faustus laughed. “Ah, the voice of a true New Yorker. Nothing exists outside of Kings County.”
Byrne thought back to his friend Jack Brennan and his squad of young Pinkertons who’d never stepped outside the city, and he had to admit to Faustus’ portrayal. He decided to change the subject.
“What else did Carver say she witnessed that night?”
“She denied seeing anyone else at the scene of the crime and swears she did not hear a gunshot nor did she see the fire begin.”
“Did Marjory say anything? I’d sure as hell be surprised if she didn’t know this Birch woman, if they’re as prominent as they appear.”
“She said she knew of her,” Faustus said, but his voice betrayed him.
“And you think she’s lying?”
“It’s a very close society on the island. The separation between the daughter of Flagler’s right hand man and the wife of a prominent banker would be thin at best.